It was a rough week last week with a lot of weekend work rolled in. Coming out of it this week. The schedule is now extremely tight and we have no room for error - but I think we’ve finally got most everything under control. Not that I can relax but perhaps I can inch my stress level down a couple of notches. As always my lovely wife, energetic puppy, and an occasional bit of Mass Effect 2 have helped me to decompress.

In other news, the puppy slept up stairs with us for the first time last night. I think she is a little confused but sure was happy to see us in the morning still.

Just got done with a good 53 hour week, but I did get a good rest over the weekend. Now I’m looking ahead to another long hour week. But, appraisals are still on the way and I’m seeing a lot of positive signs. Into the week!

Well we finally have gotten underway with our major testing in our new project at work. We’ve waited weeks for other teams and people to get in order. And now - with our first major tests underway - everything is breaking! Gah! Well, looks like I’ve got till the end of the week to really fix some stuff so I can enjoy my coming holiday.

Well, we’ll try to get back to the basics of blogging one more time. It’s come to my understanding that several members of my family and friends know about my page here and that I am fairly terrible with keeping up with e-mail so I’ll try and get this page updated on a regular basis.

What’s new: got the heater fixed in the new house, still need to get some good pictures of it up here on the blog. Our friend Dave has moved in as a temporary house guest while he is getting back on his feet. My home made pickles were a success over Thanksgiving! Recipes to be posted though I have Alton Brown to thank for a good deal of the basics.

Work is going to be fast and furious over peak it seems, no more downtime, we’re going straight from getting the old stuff installed to working on the new stuff. And I have a new boss to dazzle as well.

Over and out for now.

It is staggering the amount of spam that comes into this account. I’m going to try and get a couple of site improvements up in the next coming days, revamp a couple of the pages, fix some dead links, update some WoW stuff. Work is just starting to pick up again, but everything seems to be going well. I’ve been bad about my updates again but you can blame that on WoW and Gears. We had a lunch at a cheap Brazilian Grill today, excellent food. I simply must take others here soon – it’s sort of a poor man’s version of the high end Chicago place we ate at. Well, it seems my program just error-stopped so time to enter debug mode…

Current Mood: Debugging

Listening To: Free - Seal

Gah, it’s been hard to try and find time to post lately. Work has been running in fairly high gear despite it being in peak. We’re preparing for the next phase of the project. I suppose it is good that we are always looking forward and I’m certainly not bored.

A lot has happened since I last had a few minutes to post. Let’s see… DJ and Dana got married (hopefully I’ll get some pictures up soon)! It was a very nice wedding and I hope they are still enjoying themselves in Vegas. We deployed our year long project at work. Who-Hoo…! And the US elected a new president.

So a lot has been going on. I’ll try to get back around to post here soon. Sheese, haven’t even checked web comics this week…

Current Mood: Working Hard

Listening To: Right On, Right Now- Powerspace

We it was a productive weekend for OU, producing a convincing win and maintaining their position in the polls. Not everything is roses though. If you aren’t disgusted enough by the behavior of both of our political parties and their mudslinging campaign strategies you could always watch the Cowboys play and be disgusted further.

We’ve receiving a reprieve at work, an additional couple of weeks to get our testing together. Not all the issues have been on us, but the stress is abating to some degree. Not much more to say on that. I will get to dabble in Visual Studio 2005 soon (and the ASP and .Net 2.0 framework) which does excite me. Wow… geekdom… I do find it humorous though that the NEW version I’ll be receiving is 2005. Ah, corporate life. All in all I’m braced for a pretty productive week though. The new work for 2009 is starting to roll in, but I’m receiving a great deal of assistance from other teams so things look very promising.

Dave posted the pictures from the new Star Trek movie over in the forums. I have to say that JJ is handling this thing with a great bit of class and attention to detail. He obviously knew the danger involved in handling subject matter and you can tell from the costumes and makeup that every effort has been made to bridge the gap between old and new. My hopes and expectations are very high, which doesn’t happen often. I hope he can impress come release date.

That’s it for now. Rock on as appropriate.

Current Mood: Mellow

Listening To: Square One- Coldplay

Well a ton of stuff going on. Not a whole lot of time this morning but so much stuff going on.

OU got jammed up by officiating (although Texas is one hell of a team and may have beaten us anyway). Dallas… Well let’s just say that Dallas is experiencing QB difficulties. As is my fantasy team… <grumbles> Optimistically though OU only fell to 4th. Go us.

Had several new dinner recipes yesterday, not a lot of time to go into them now though. Perhaps later in the week we’ll have an update from Grill Master Matt.

Work is now at full stumbling speed ahead. We’ve an executive review this Wednesday where they basically give us the Go / No Go for the whole deal. I think we’re going to make it, but a lot stuff has been cut off or re-envisioned as we’ve gone forward. I’ve trying very hard not to equate it to a sinking ship where we are casting modules of code off as so much ballast. But believe me when I say, I am positive and think we are going to make it.

I have to shrink my work e-mail to under 500MB. Seems like a lot… You have no idea how much e-mail you have till you have a new limit. Hot damn, it’s hard to shrink it all.

Gearing up for this high school reunion this weekend. I’m still looking forward to it, but its funny how these things have a way of making you look back at things. I still can hardly believe it’s been ten years while at the same time it seems ages ago since I was actually in high school. Hell, my wife TEACHES high school now.

That’s all we have time for this morning campers. Enjoy the day!

Current Mood: High Gear

Listening To: In Your Eyes - Peter Gabriel

And we’re off to another week! Testing last week went fairly well. Our new engine actually gains efficiency the harder you press it (this is a good thing). This week looks to also be productive. Now if only we can stop added to the issues list as fast as we are confirming testing… Well all the basic testing will be over next week in any case as we approach deadline.

Well, I’ve finally heard Nickelback’s new one. It’s not bad. I’m very curious to listen to the rest of the new album. Nickelback gets quite a heavy rap from the industry about their style of music (and that they use the same formula repeatedly). But I say use what works. And Chris Martin, lead man for Coldplay agrees if you haven’t read it yet.

I made the wife some orange roughy on the grill last night. I’ll see if I can locate the recipe again for a post. Grilled fish wasn’t nearly as difficult as I might have imagined it would be. In fact, fish may be one of the easiest things to cook on the grill.

So now I’m gearing up for my 10 year high school reunion. It’s going to be very interesting (I almost can’t believe it’s been 10 years). I wonder how many people I’m going to remember or recognize. My memory with faces and names is just terrible so I’m going to have to rely a lot on people remembering me. That said, I do know three of the coordinators, I went to school with them since kindergarten.

We saw Appaloosa this weekend. Not fantastic, but very entertaining. It definitely didn’t fit the mold of a classic western. I’ve never seen a western before that (A) was as humorous as this one and (B) used saxophone prominently in the musical score. Ed Harris is good, but Viggo is amazing in the film. It’s worth a watch, but I wouldn’t buy too much into the commercials you are seeing about the “amazing triumph” as a western film.

Your random fact of the day: the Appaloosa is a horse breed known for its preferred leopard-spotted coat pattern and other distinctive physical characteristics.

Well, I’d best get to the testing and work here. Have a good week all, over and out.

Current Mood: Crafty

Listening To: Another Day in Paradise - Phil Collins

Well work has been interesting. We are moving pretty fast with our testing… breakneck speed I’d say. If the technical team would stop shutting down our environment and pegging out the primary CPU to 100% in the middle of our test, that would be fantastic.

I made a pretty damn good steak this past weekend. I think my grilling knowledge is improving substantially. Most of my “customers” agree I’ve nailed boneless chicken breast. Steak took a while to get down. And while my Dad would probably kill me for marinating a good steak, here is my way of doing strip:

The marinade should cover the bottom of a walled dish (I use a glass baking dish). You need enough marinade to not quite submerge all the meat. I like the marinade to come about 75% up the sides and I crowd and press the strip together pretty tightly when I do this.

Marinade:
  • Olive Oil (4 Parts)
  • Balsamic Vinegar (1 Part)
  • Worcestershire Sauce (1 Part)
  • Kosher Salt (liberal)
  • Onion Flakes (liberal)
  • Garlic Powder
  • Marjoram
  • Thyme
  • Black Pepper

I marinate 4-6 hours in the refrigerator with the dish saran wrapped closed. Flip the meat in the marinade once.

After marinating and about 1 hour before grill time, I take the steak out, take them for a quick rinse and pat them dry. It’s important to get them to room temperature before grilling.

Give the steak a quick salt cure (no this doesn’t make the steak overly salty). Lay out all your meat flat, and cover liberally with kosher salt (make sure the steak is dry when you do this). Cover one side completely. If you want you can cover the bottoms too, though I usually don’t find it necessary. Let them sit like this for 30-60 minutes. Then rinse with water and pat dry. Your steaks are now ready for the grill.

Hope you enjoyed our little grilling informational here. I’m back to work.

Over and out.

Current Mood: Intense

Listening To: Crystal Ball - Keane